As you have probably noticed, I haven't updated this site in awhile. I have taken a break to focus on a new project, a mobile game for the iPhone. What does a former stockbroker know about game development? Nothing. It's been a rocky few months as I pulled together financing, formed a company, contracted with a developer and started designing the game. We plan to launch January 1, 2013. More details to follow soon.

You wake up 25 years from now — or sooner, perhaps — visit your favorite information portal, and are astonished to discover the Dow Jones Industrial Average has finally reached the magical 100,000 mark.

"From 1982 until the speculative Internet top of 2000, the good old Dow went up more than 13-fold," said Philippe Gijsels, head of fixed income research and marketing at BNP Paribas Frotis, in a recent interview with CNBC.com http://www.cnbc.com/id/47409660/Dow_100_000_One_Analyst_Says_It_May_Happen

He went on to say: "For if history were once again to repeat itself and stock markets should once again see a tenfold increase over a period of 25 years, the next magical figure of 100,000 for the Dow could come into sight. It sounds spectacular. However, this is the move that we have already seen twice over the last 80 years."

Okay. So what does that mean for us in 2012?

It means that despite the Dow's daily gyrations, the world's leading central banks continue to pump money into the market with ever-increasing optimism for the future. And we, too, should share that optimism.

And Gijsels isn't the only Bull on the block.

Though his projections are so far only filling the outer layer of our crystal ball, Wall Street guru Byron Wien in a recent interview with Fast Money & Halftime speculates that the Bull market will continue through 2012. http://www.cnbc.com/id/46943203/Bull_Market_to_Continue_Rest_of_Year_Byron_Wien

"Over the past three months the pessimistic mood has changed to optimism," he said. "Ordinarily, optimistic sentiment readings presage a market correction, but there are so many investors looking for an opportunity to increase their exposure that even a minor downdraft gets cut short by a flood of buyers. This could continue for a while."

Time, no doubt, will tell if the market reaches the magic Dow 100,000. But if you want to be on the train when it pulls into that station, get on board now.

“The next secular bull market is on its way,” says Lance Robert, host of “StreetTalkLive.”

He backs his prediction with his take on the latest Elliot Wave-theory indicators, posted on the BusinessInsider entitled, “This looks like Wave 5 of a Cyclical Bull Market,”

For Roberts, due diligence requires a look back at previous attempts to round the bull market corners; he studied the past 3-year advance in the market, and his practiced ‘eyes’ saw what all technicians of the market look for: a pattern.

Then, he dug deep in this ‘toolbox’ of analytics and began divining what all the ‘Waves’ were about for those past three years; his article gets deep-in-the-weeds with analysis and charts in defining “...the five waves of a cyclical bull market advance...”

Wave 1: This one can be hard to pick out, says Roberts, because “the fundamental news is almost universally negative.” Okay, hard to figure, but he points to one indicator having to do with ‘volume;’ it might be increasing along with prices, but not enough to signal any break away.

Wave 2: The bad news is still hanging around about this time, and this Wave just doesn’t have the legs to keep this phase going: a lot of prices are ‘re-testing’ lows and bearish sentiment is all around.

Wave 3: Hang on...this one is a mighty Wave and “is usually the largest and most powerful wave in a trend.” Investors are starting to perk up as prices rise, and “corrections are short-lived.”

Wave 4: Nothing lasts forever, right? Well, this one points to a temporary correction and is defined by ‘volume:’ “... (it) is well below than that of Wave three. This is a good place to buy and pull back if you understand the potential ahead for Wave 5.”

Wave 5: This wave-of-waves is like a train coming at you and “...is the final leg in the direction of the dominant trend.”

And is the ‘dominant trend’ in this secular bull market one we can see coming? Roberts says “it will most likely require one more major market correction before we get there.”

Ken Fisher is calling for a bullish second half to put it mildly. So the next time your clients are debating the market impact of the election just tell them it doesn't matter!

Then, too, there’s another pattern most miss. Love it or hate it, we either re-elect a Democrat or newly elect a Republican in November. Barring alien invasion, no other options. Historically, US stocks average 14.5% when we re-elect a Democrat and 18.8% when we newly elect a Republican—both great outcomes. So tune it out—your eardrums and portfolio will thank you.

According to Russolillo and Kingsbury, "low churn rates at Apple make the company less susceptible to global subsidy reductions." They quote Goldman Sachs further as saying, “This, coupled with the iPhone’s potential for further smartphone share gains and penetration into emerging regions, suggests the overall risk of reduced subsidies is overblown.”

Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, was quoted by MarketBeat as saying he "expects the company will sell nearly 50 million iPhones in the December quarter, spurred by the expected launch of the next-generation iPhone."

Meanwhile, SanDisk saw a share increase of 5.3% after the Pacific Crest brokerage issued an "outperform," according to CBS News MoneyWatch. Monica Garb, analyst for Pacific Crest, said solid-state drives could produce 25 percent of SanDisk's revenue by 2014, up from 3 percent in 2011," according to MoneyWatch, and she also contended that "SanDisk trades at a 70 percent discount to its asset value" and called this "an opportune time to consider long positions."

Matt Egan, writing for Fox Business News reported that the home builders' sector enjoyed gains that were "boosted by a 34% leap in revenue at Hovnanian" whose shares "surged 20%" and closed 18% up. Hovanian Enterprises, Inc., based out of Red Bank, NJ, is the largest home builder in New Jersey.

Egan quoted from a statement issued by CEO Ara Hovnanian, who said, "The sales improvements we have experienced are fairly wide-based in terms of geography, price points and buyer profiles. We are encouraged that the homebuilding industry may be entering the early stages of a recovery.” Egan further attributed the increased action to "bullish analysts' reports."

This surge in the home builders' sector led to a market rally that saw the previous week's losses erased. Writing for Fox11 Online, AP Business Writer Matthew Craft cited hope that European officials would find ways to ease the region's debt crisis as helping to launch the rally and mentioned positive reports from LPL Financial and speculation that the Federal Reserve may take more steps to bolster the U.S. economic recovery as additional reasons for the Dow Jones' best day thus far in 2012.

Children of the baby-boomers are entering the time in life where investing is a serious thought. A growing independence from foreign energy sources. Housing prices are expected to finally bottom out. Add to that the technological advances continuing with innovation and a raging bull market is quite possibly around the corner. These are only four of the six trends introduced in The Raging Bull Thesis by Tobias Levkovich. Currently the chief U.S. stock strategist at Citi Investment Research & Analysis, he predicts “a major bull market will begin within the next year or so.

While many are hesitating to predict a bull market, Levkovich suggests it is more predictable. The parallel to the 1990s continues to grow as several economic comparisons can be made. The stock market fell in 1990 and housing prices nose-dived. The debt crisis was all too familiar to what we are seeing today.

“The sheer magnitude of mobility growth brings computing, the Internet, purchasing and entertainment in one’s palm and argues for significant investment in software, infrastructure, bandwidth and more efficient chips, batteries and production techniques. Fortunately, the U.S. remains the global IT leader,” says Levkovich.

American companies, including tech based busiensses, have long used the lower wages in Asian countries for manufacturing plants. However, with the 22% inflation in China’s wages last year U.S. businesses are moving manufacturing back to the United States. With relocation and the continuing rise of American oil and gas production, companies will be boosting the economy as products are once again produced locally.

In an upcoming article for Forbes Ken Fisher suggests “it’s a good time to buy, selectively.” He later recommends three tech stocks to invest in. This includes Garmin (GRMN) at 33, Symantec (SYMC), and Microchip Technology (MCHP).

Garmin (GRMN) has introduced more sophisticated outdoor recreational uses and shows promise. Symantec (SYMC) leads the world in computer software security systems. And Microchip Technology (MCHP) is a global leader in microcontrollers.

While the comparison to the 1990s isn’t perfect, the similarities are hard to ignore. The U.S. economy could experience a raging bull market in less than two years if Levkovich’s predictions come to fruition. He believes that it will only occur once “the major stock indexes reach new price highs.” This has not happened yet, but he continues to be optimistic.

"The U.S. economy remains almost comatose....The current slump already ranks as the longest period of sustained weakness since the Great Depression....Once-in-a-lifetime dislocations...will take years to work out. Among them: the job drought, the debt hangover, the defense-industry contraction, the [banking] collapse, the real estate depression, the health-care cost explosion and the runaway federal deficit."

This quote is from Time magazine...September 1992. Is it just me or does this sound really familiar?

The continuing financial crisis in Greece, slowdown in China, and worries over the U.S. economy have kept investors on their toes with a bull-bear roller coaster market. But could there actually be a Dow 100,000 in the not too distant future?

This is the optimistic prediction made by Philippe Gijsels, head of fixed income research and marketing at BNP Paribas Fortis.

“If history were once again to repeat itself and stock markets would once again see a tenfold increase over a period of 25 years, the next magical figure of 100,000 for the Dow could come into sight. It sounds spectacular. However, this is the move that we have already seen twice over the last 80 years.”

While we are still a long way from solving the worldwide debt crisis, Gijsels believes that inves tors will reap the rewards of patience in the form of massive returns. To understand how this will occur, Gijsels points to periods where the Dow had literally no progress but then made substantial turnarounds. These periods included the 22 years following the big crash of 1929, the period following high inflation of the 1970‘s, and then from 1982 to 2000 with the burst of the Internet bubble.

In fact, according to Sean Udall of the TechStrat Report, there are several reasons to expect the bulls to thrive.

Give the market more credit than that — investors in Visa, MasterCard and American Express sure are, trader and author Daryl Guppy says in a new CNBC post.

Despite the usual fluctuations, retail credit markets have been growing steadily since last year, Guppy reports. Since September 2011, Visa stock has risen from $75 to $125 — a 66 percent increase, he notes.It’s a noteworthy number, because when the 2008 recession hit, many American consumers shifted from credit cards to cash for purchases.

“Cash came out of the stock market,” according to Guppy’s post. “Cash was used to pay off credit cards and debt.”As a result, consumption — and demand — plummeted.But retail credit markets are pointing to persistent demand in the future.

“The chart of the Visa stock price,” Guppy concludes, “points the way to the future intentions of the U.S. consumer and they are bullish. This suggests that the Dow will recover momentum because this increase in personal credit demand will drive up consumption.

“For investors, the dips in the Dow trend are a long term buying opportunity.”The key take-away here is that smart investors are always looking at what’s coming, not what happened last week. These numbers suggest what’s coming is a lot of reasons to invest now.No holding back these bulls — Dow 100,000, here we come.